Criminal justice reporter

Authorities recently captured a Lexington man who allegedly broke into an ex-girlfriend’s eastside Athens apartment and terrorized the woman and her roommate with a knife.

Marcus Anthony Dukes had stalked his former girlfriend both before and after he held her captive during the Oct. 2 burglary of her home on Barrington Place, according to Athens-Clarke police said.

Crime Stoppers had offered a reward for information leading to Dukes arrest, but that did not appear to play a role in his capture.

Athens-Clarke police Capt. Clarence Holeman said Oglethorpe County sheriff’s deputies and members of the Northeast Georgia Regional Drug Task Force located Dukes on Monday at his home in Lexington.

Police said Dukes used duct tape to restrain the roommate and his former girlfriend, who suffered a minor knife cut during a struggle.

Following the alleged assault, and while on the run from police, Dukes made several attempts to contact his former girlfriend and even spoke to her at least once, Holeman said.

At the time, Dukes was on probation in Oglethorpe County. Three months earlier, he was convicted of trying to bribe a probation officer to remove an ankle monitor he wore from a previous domestic violence arrest, authorities said.

An Oglethorpe County judge previously issued a permanent protective order forbidding Dukes from having any contact with the woman, with whom Dukes has a child.

Dukes got into the woman’s home on Oct. 2 after he unscrewed a vent opening, climbed inside and made his way through a crawlspace leading into the apartment, police said. He waited for his former girlfriend to come home, but the roommate arrived first and Dukes restrained her and forced her at knifepoint to sit on a couch to await the other woman’s arrival.

When the ex-girlfriend came home, she and her roommate got into a struggle with Dukes, during which the ex-girlfriend suffered a cut to her hand, police said.

Following his arrest in Lexington, Dukes remained in custody in Oglethorpe County until Tuesday afternoon, when he was transferred to the Clarke County Jail.

He was booked in on charges of aggravated assault, aggravated stalking, burglary, two counts of false imprisonment, harassment, simple battery, and violating a family violence protective order.